Storing Arrays with Active Record
When first learning Active Record, I was under the impression that there was a very limited amount of declarations I could use when creating a table. But when it came time to start my Flatiron phase 4 project, I wanted to have my database store an array of values to be accessed later. Up until that point I was under the assumption that you could only store strings, integers, booleans, etc. I thought that my project idea was going to either flush down the drain, or be an awfully long slog of finding work arounds to store an array.
Luckily after a bit of research I found that there are a few ways that you could store arrays in a database, without having to create janky code.
I created a small example for this where a user could store a list of favorites with a name and list attribute. The only additional thing I added was that I set the list attribute to be an array. This small change takes the list attribute and changes it from expecting just a string to expecting an array containing strings. This can also be done with other types (t.integer for an array of numbers for example).
From there I was able to seed data, creating lists for my favorite fruits, shows, and brothers. When I started a rails console, I checked to see if the array was successfully seeded.
With that working, we are now able to store and access arrays in our Rails databases for future use.
